If you’re looking for a full walkthrough on installing Jenkins on Ubuntu 24.04 (along with an agent instance), you’ve come to the right place! In this video, Jay details the entire setup process of Jenkins on the latest version of Ubuntu Server during this easy to follow guide.

Commands Used in this Video

Installing Java

sudo apt install fontconfig openjdk-17-jre

Test Java by checking its version

java -version

Adding the key for the Jenkins repository

sudo wget -O /usr/share/keyrings/jenkins-keyring.asc https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable/jenkins.io-2023.key

Add the Jenkins repository to your server

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/jenkins-keyring.asc]" \
https://pkg.jenkins.io/debian-stable binary/ | sudo tee \
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list > /dev/null

Install Jenkins

sudo apt update

sudo apt install jenkins

Log in to web console at port 8080

Unlock Jenkins

Enter the following command to retrieve your secret key from your server when you’re asked for it:

sudo cat /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword

Adding a system user for the Jenkins Agent

sudo useradd -r -md /var/jenkins_home -s /bin/bash jenkins

Update permissions on the Jenkins home directory

chown jenkins:jenkins -R /var/jenkins_home

Note: That directory should’ve been created earlier during the test run as shown in the video.

Create a directory for the Agent’s Systemd Service

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/jenkins-service

move the file downloaded earlier somewhere else:

sudo mv agent.jar /usr/local/jenkins-service/

Jenkins Agent Start Script

Open an editor to the file we’ll be creating:

sudo nano /usr/local/jenkins-service/start-agent.sh

Inside the file, place the following:

#!/bin/bash

cd /usr/local/jenkins-service

curl -sO http://10.10.10.205:8080/jnlpJars/agent.jar

exit 0

Update the permissions for the Start Script

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/jenkins-service/start-agent.sh

Create a Systemd Unit to start the agent

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/jenkins-agent.service

Inside the file, place the following:

[Unit]
Description=Jenkins Agent

[Service]
User=jenkins
WorkingDirectory=/var/jenkins_home
ExecStart=/bin/bash /usr/local/jenkins-service/start-agent.sh
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Refresh Systemd and enable/start the agent

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo systemctl enable jenkins-agent.service

sudo systemctl start jenkins-agent.service